Hello again. :)
It's been a while since I last updated, but now that exams are over, I'm free.
Well, as free as a fifteen year old can be.
Which isn't very free, now is it? Maybe it's the fact that my major exams are closer than ever before. Two years away, one year away, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four months away. Time flies by so quickly, the harder I try to hold on to it, the easier it slips away from me.
I used to be so small, so curious. I used to be so soft, so transparent. Tales and stories and pictures and incidents, the world would spin and I would not know it, I would remain unaffected, untouched.
I used to be so, so, childlike.
I used to be a child. I used to be a delusional child whose world evolved around her toys and her family.
Now, though I have tried to stop it, I have grown up. Sometimes, I think I grew faster than my friends did, than my family. Sometimes I worry that I've outgrown everyone and everything I love. Then I make that small, childish mistake, and I worry that perhaps I am not ahead, but very far behind. I worry that perhaps it wasn't me who outgrew them, but they who outgrew me.
Yeah. I worry a lot.
But I miss those times. I miss the times when exams used to be 'connect the dots' and 'fill in the spaces'. The times when we would learn because we were curious, because we wanted to. The times before our curiosity was replaced with dread, before we realised that we must learn, we must memorise, because if we did not force ourselves to absorb everything the education system threw at us, we would not get straight A's, and that would surely mean the end of the world as we know it.
I miss the times when we didn't give a damn.
I miss the times when we were free.
We've become prisoners of our own minds. We've become the passengers of our own bodies. We have lost all our rights to be ourselves, to be and act and grow- as children.
Isn't that sad?
Ideally, we are soldiers. Not physically, but mentally.
Our minds are the soldiers, winning the battles, but losing the war.
We take in everything we are taught, not really understanding, never really quite sure why we must, and how it helps. We achieve the A's we so desperately need, the worthless letters scrawled upon equally worthless pieces of paper, and we treasure them, we use them as symbols of victory. We win, if we do try hard enough, we understand, we take one step closer to that oh-so-important goal. We become the doctors, the lawyers, the chemical engineers that our family expects us to be, we walk upon the path that has been laid down for us.
But then something happens. Something that was never worth the blood and sweat and tears we have invested into this future that we so obviously do not want for ourselves.
We lose our freedom.
I am not saying that getting good results is bad. I am saying that even with good results, the winning of the war is not guaranteed. We will become successful, we will climb the social ladder. We will, so to say, achieve our dreams.
But along the way, we lose something special. Our childhood. Our happiness. Along the way, we might lose everything that we know, deep down; matters.
Freedom to me, is the right to not give a damn. Freedom, to me, is to be able to get a C for something, and to shake your head and to tell yourself that you deserve this, that this is good, because this grade is equal to the amount of effort you have put in.
Freedom is to be able to play, to grow, to learn, to achieve, to become, because you, and only you, genuinely want to.
Freedom is the luxury of living because you want to. Of being good at something, because you want to.
No one can tell you what to do. No one, not even your parents, or your teachers. I can't tell you what to do. You can ignore this blog post and just continue to live life as you've always done if you please to do so.
You know why? Because we're all humans. Because we all want different things. Because subconsciously, we want others to want the same things we do.
Your faith in God should be enough. He The Almighty, should be enough. Let Him soothe you of your fears. Let Him hold your hand as you walk down the path you lay down for yourself.
Because honestly, if you are walking that path quickly, if you are heading straight for the intended destination, but you find that you keep looking back; then you are not free.
You should not have to ask for directions. You should not have to second guess yourself. You should not have to question every factor that has contributed to the existence of this abstract path that you walk on.
You should know. You should know where you are going, you should know the path at your feet like the back of your hand. You should know this, because you should have been the one that built it in the first place.
It will be hard.
It will be so, so, very hard.
But when difficulty comes, happiness also follows.
And when you've achieved happiness, then congratulations.
You're free.
